"... Narrative Science's technology helps address the intelligence community's challenge of analyzing massive amounts of data, such as video surveillance footage, a history of financial transactions or social media postings. ... 'We think it represents a pretty significant expansion in terms of the market opportunity for us. It will hopefully enable us to work even deeper with folks in the intelligence community.' ..."

Company specializing in artificial intelligence to build program to help In-Q-Tel's government clients with data mining, interpretation

June 6, 2013

Stuart Frankel can't tell you how his startup got connected with the Central Intelligence Agency. He can't tell you whether he now has security clearance. But he can tell you that he is very excited about the funding and partnership deal that his company, Chicago-based Narrative Science, signed with the CIA's venture capital arm.

"We're obviously pleased to be part of this portfolio," said Frankel, chief executive for the firm, which specializes in artificial intelligence and communication technology. "We think it represents a pretty significant expansion in terms of the market opportunity for us. It will hopefully enable us to work even deeper with folks in the intelligence community."

The amount Arlington, Va.-based In-Q-Tel invested in Narrative Science was not disclosed. The startup said it will build a version of Quill, its flagship technology product, for In-Q-Tel's government customers. The CIA established In-Q-Tel in 1999 to look for short-term investment opportunities in cutting-edge technology coming out of startups that might otherwise escape the government's notice.

Narrative Science's technology helps address the intelligence community's challenge of analyzing massive amounts of data, such as video surveillance footage, a history of financial transactions or social media postings.

Quill's artificial intelligence algorithms mine large data sets for key facts and write natural-sounding English prose based on the data. The program can produce a range of formats, from tweets to long-form business reports, and Narrative Science's customers include companies in industries such as financial services and marketing.

The startup's technology "analyzes data and communicates this information in a way that is easy to read and understand," Steve Bowsher, managing partner at In-Q-Tel, said in a statement. "We believe these advanced analytic capabilities can be of great value to our customers in the Intelligence Community."

Narrative Science came out of Northwestern University, where computer science and journalism students created software to write automated recaps of baseball games. Frankel, a former DoubleClick executive who was an adviser to the Intelligent Information Laboratory at Northwestern, helped license the technology from the university to create the startup.

Frankel said Narrative Science's business has "evolved pretty significantly," with less focus on creating news content and more efforts on serving financial firms and marketing companies. Before the deal with In-Q-Tel, Narrative Science had raised about $10 million in three rounds of funding from coastal investors such as Battery Ventures and SV Angel.

The government sector can be "difficult to get into, and that's one of the things we're excited about," Frankel said. "We actually have a lot of inbound interest from … different organizations within the U.S. government, both within the intelligence community but also outside of that. It was definitely an area that we were learning about, and we thought there was a lot of potential."

The "Q" in In-Q-Tel's name is a reference to the British Secret Service quartermaster who supplied fictional character James Bond with his fancy spyware.

"I've found that our technical capabilities often far exceed what you see in Tom Cruise films," then-CIA Director David Petraeus said at an In-Q-Tel gathering in March 2012, according to a transcript of his remarks. "But there are a few feats he can accomplish in the movies that we can't: We haven't figured out, for example, how to change an individual's fingerprints or eyeballs just yet — but give us time. In any event, our partnership with In-Q-Tel is essential to helping identify and deliver groundbreaking technologies with mission-critical applications to the CIA and to our partner agencies."

Latest Comments

rebellb
I think Charles Manson and the Manson "Family" were a fascist conspiracy to make the hippies look bad. I suspect Manson himself was programmed. He had been in various prisons, where a lot of brainwashing occurs. While he likely learned mind control techniques there, he was also subjected to them. The film industry is involved in a lot of propaganda to get people to go along with the system. The Spahn Ranch was likely used in many of the Westerns that glorified the genocide of the Native Americans and programmed the minds of many people. Many people who got caught up in the Manson cult were vulnerable and naive people who were looking to escape the authoritarianism of their bourgeois families, but instead got taken in by this brainwashed brainwasher who pretended to be a hippie. The Spahn Ranch likely contained a lot of triggers that might have been used in programming the members of the Manson "Family".

Lyle Courtsal
This guy is not a Christian if he is sending vulnerable people to a stateless person status. A lot of rightwingers who think they're Christians ain't going to make. Remember, thou shalt not kill, by gun or budget cut.

Hank
Oh and further evidence of his being an agent provocateur is quoting an anti-pope of the new Vatican II pseudo-Christianity. It's pretty clear after the Judaeo-Masonic takeover of the Catholic Church with Vatican II that this fully controlled religious entity is being made to be the One World Religion of ecumenism, do as thou wilt and other satanic creeds. SHAME ON CONSTANTINE. I only need use the words of Archangel Michael: Lord rebuke you, alex constantine.

Lyle Courtsal
And I forgot about Luke Elliott Sommer and friends who exposed 65 torture centers mostly in Afghanistan. He came home and exposed them, then he and his associates did a bank job for running money. What most people don't understand is that once you violate a clearance, then they start gunning for you. They ran to Canada and then turned themselves in. Then of course there was the talk about how Sommer was going to use the money to start in the canadian ganja businessl weird how it was that when I posted additional information on wikipedia, it would vanish off the site in about a second. Type it in again and once again, the good stuff on the torture centers would vanish, but the garbage about the canadian pot business would still be there. Weird. . .